One Week Down, One More Till Jamboree

SALEM, Ore.– As they went out for Friday morning’s practice with helmets and jerseys in a walk through-like practice with evening practice later on and their intrasquad scrimmage Saturday at the High School, the McKay Scots Football team were just wrapping up their first week of practice for the season as the smoke from earlier in the week was slowly moving out of the area.

“It’s been going good, a lot of kids are stepping up. It’s been kind of slow, but we’ll get there because we can see the progress and stuff,” said Edson Suda on the progress of the first week of the Fall season.

Suda and Andy Nyguen were working their long-snapping technique during the first part of the practice with them focusing on punts and punt return on the scoreboard side of the field as their teammates were working on other parts of special teams on the field around them.

McKay working on adjusting to the run during Friday morning’s practice (Picture By Jeremy McDonald)

The squad is entering year three of the Josh Riddell tenure and even though 2017 didn’t yield similar results to 2016 with several close games that season, the Scots are feeling confident as they join in Football-only with West Albany and North Salem in the 5A Special District 3.

Offensively, Angel Silva, BJ Fitzgerald and Caleb Parksion duking it out for the starting quarterback role, it’s important for whoever wins the QB Battle to be ready to go with some athletic guys out at receiver like Ty Kynaston, Elijah Polkavich, and RJ Chokai. The three said Sliva, are going to be leaders at the position no matter who’s throwing them the rock.

“We just got to be leaders like all those other times,” said Silva, who started as the JV quarterback in 2017 for McKay on the QB Competition. “I’ve been quarterback since freshman year, it’s just a learning process and get better every day. Obviously, we have young quarterbacks too, it’s a competition.

“Elijah, RJ is a good one. With have Tyler (Ty) who’s been playing receiver for a pretty long time. It’s a good core right there and obviously those are leaders who can lead the rest,” adds Silva on the receiver group.

Aden Hyatt is another big quarterback name in the program who helped the freshman team in 2017 and been around the 7-on-7 program this offseason as Hyatt enters his sophomore year and could make some noise in the years to come. Brian Coburn will be another skills position threat as Coburn was getting some reps with the Varsity guys Thursday evening.

The Scots worked on a few things during Friday’s practice with Special Teams being a vocal point (Picture By Jeremy McDonald)

Defensively, the linebacker core that features Jonathan Mentado and Zair Ku Beiza along with Leo Figueroa head hunting in the secondary. But as Mentado put it in his stern-like persona, it’s not going to be two or three guys that’ll be the deciding factor, it’s going to have to be everyone involved. 56

“It’s basically everybody, it’s not certain people. It’s a whole team and not going to be a couple of people. A team could have three people and the whole team’s butt,” said Mentado with a smile on his defense with Mentado entering his senior season.

With them opening the season at home versus West Albany after going to Cascade for the jamboree next Friday in Turner, they start the 5A Speical District League season with a familiar foe before traveling to Independence for Central before hosting South Albany Week 2.

“West Albany that first week, a lot of guys are getting prepared for them because they got us good last year,” said Suda. “But this year in practice, the guys are getting their mental reps in too and I think it’s going to be really good.”